Fuelettes. Alfred Carysfort had come to Batavia on business: he had
met Felix Shap again, who by this time had become a hopeless wastrel.
The contract for the sale of the patent rights in the Fuelettes was
duly executed, but whether, after seeing his son once more, the call
of the blood became more insistent in the heart of Alfred Carysfort,
or whether he merely yielded to blackmail, Sir David could not say;
certain it is that after a while when the profits of the Shap
Fuelettes Company became substantial, Sir Alfred took to sending over
a couple of hundred pounds every year to Shap for the benefit of
young Alfred. Then the war broke out; young Alfred joined the
Australian Expeditionary Force, and was killed in Gallipoli in
August, 1915. As soon as Sir Alfred had definite news of the boy's
death, he naturally stopped all further payments to Shap.
"The story as you see sounded plausible enough, and if it proved to
be untrue, it would reflect great credit on Sir David's gift of
imagination. Felix Shap, as was only to be expected, denied it from
beginning to end; the whole thing, he declared, was an impudent
falsehood, based on a semblance of truth. It was quite true that he
had adopted and for years had cared for his sister's son, who was
subsequently killed in Gallipoli; it was also true that Alfred
Carysfort had years ago paid some attention to his sister Berta, but
there never was any question of marriage between them, young
Carysfort deeming himself far too grand and well-born to marry the
daughter of an obscure East Indian trader. Berta had subsequently
married a man of mixed blood who deserted her and went off somewhere
to Argentina or Honduras--Shap did not know where; at any rate, he
was never heard of again.
"In proof of his version of the romantic story, Felix Shap actually
had a copy of his sister's marriage certificate, as well as one or
two letters written at different times to his sister Berta by her
rascally husband. He had, indeed, plenty of proofs for his
assertions; but when Mr. Stonebridge asked for confirmation of Sir
David's story, the latter appeared either unprepared or unwilling to
produce any, whereupon, Mr. Stonebridge, on behalf of his client,
entered an action for the recovery of certain royalties due to him on
the sales of the Shap Fuelettes, the amount to be presently agreed on
after examination of the audited accounts.
"Thus matters stood when on that Wednesday night in February last,
Mr. Stonebridge was found gagged and unconscious, the victim of a
murderous and inexplicable assault.
"On the Monday following, Mr. Felix Shap, accompanied by his friend,
Mr. Lloyd, called on Mr. Medburn at the office in High Street. They
had read in the papers certain details which had filled Shap with
apprehension; they had read that the safe in the morning-room in Mr.
Stonebridge's house had been obviously ransacked, and that the
analysis of the ashes in the grate had revealed the presence of a
large quantity of burnt paper.
"'My friend Mr. Shap would like you to put his mind at rest,
Mr.--er--Medburn,' Mr. Lloyd said, in an anxious, agitated tone of
voice, 'that the papers relating to his case, which he entrusted to
Mr. Stonebridge, are safely locked up in a safe at this office.'
"Unfortunately, the head clerk was not able to satisfy Mr. Shap on
that point. Mr. Stonebridge had never brought the papers to the
office, nor had Mr. Medburn ever seen them. His impression was--he
regretted to say--that Mr. Stonebridge had, for the time being, kept
all papers relating to this particular case at his private house,
just as he had always seen Mr. Shap there rather than at the office.
Of course, Mr. Medburn hastened to assure his visitor, Mr.
Stonebridge may have kept the documents in some other secure place;
Mr. Medburn couldn't say, not having access to all his employer's
papers, and in any case he would make a comprehensive search for the
missing documents, and if nothing was found he would at once inform
the police.
"An evening or two later the papers came out with flaring headlines:
'Amazing Developments in the Tytherton outrage. Missing documents.
Sensational turn in the Shap Fuelettes case.' And so on. The head
clerk had made an exhaustive search amongst his employer's papers,
but not a trace could he find of any documents relative to Mr. Shap's
case. One and all had disappeared: the original letter from Alfred
Carysfort promising to pay an extra twenty per cent. on the profits
of the Shap Fuelette Company under certain conditions, the letters
from the scoundrel who had been Berta's husband, together with the
copy of Berta's marriage certificate--everything was gone, every
proof of the truth of the story which Felix Shap had come all this
way to tell.
§2
"The next exciting incident," the Old Man in the Corner continued
glibly, "in this remarkably mysterious case, was the news that Mr.
Allan Carysfort, eldest son of Sir David Carysfort, Bart., had been
detained in connection with the assault upon Mr. Stonebridge and the
disappearance of certain papers, the property of Mr. Felix Shap of
Batavia.
"Young Allan Carysfort, who was a subaltern in a cavalry regiment,
had come home from India recently, and, as a matter of fact, he had
arrived at the Grange, the family seat just outside Tytherton, the
very evening of the outrage. Acting upon certain information
received, the police had detained him; he was to be brought before
the magistrates on the following day; and in the meanwhile it was
generally understood that some highly sensational evidence had been
collected by the police.
"It has been asserted that Sir David Carysfort and his family were
the last to realise how very strong public opinion had been against
them ever since Shap's story and the loss of the documents had become
generally known. Though there had been no hint of it in the Press,
the public loudly declared that the Carysforts must have had
something to do with the outrage, seek him whom the crime benefits
being a most excellent adage. But imagine the sensation when Allan
Carysfort, the eldest son of Sir David Carysfort, Bart., was arrested!
"Need I say that the following day when the young man was brought
before the magistrates, the court was crowded. Sir David was a
magistrate, too, but of course he did not sit that day. To see his
eldest son arraigned before his brother Beaks must have been a bitter
pill for his pride to swallow.
"We had the usual formal evidence of arrest, the medical evidence,
and so on, after which we quickly plunged into exciting business.
Mr. Stonebridge we were soon told had made a statement. He was not
yet strong enough to appear in person, _but he had made a statement_,
so at last the public was to be initiated into the mysteries that
surrounded the inexplicable assault.
"'After my servants had gone to bed,' Mr. Stonebridge had stated, 'I
sat awhile reading in my study. I was expecting a visit from Mr.
Shap, as we had talked over the possibility of a quiet chat at my
house that evening on the subject of his affairs. He and Mr. Lloyd,
who were both of them very fond of the cinema, were in the habit of
dropping in after the show, on their way home. At about a quarter to
eleven--I am sure it was not later--there was a ring at the
front-door bell, and I went to open the door. No sooner had I done
this than a shawl or muffler of some sort was thrown over my face,
and I was made to lose my balance by the thrust of a foot between my
two shins. I came down backwards with a crash.
"'The whole thing occurred in fewer seconds than it takes to
describe; the next moment I had the sensation of cold steel against
my temple, I heard an ominous click, and a husky voice whispered in
my ear, "Your servant is coming out of his room. Speak to him, tell
him you are all right, or I shoot." What could I do? I was utterly
helpless and a revolver was held to my temple. The muffler was then
lifted from my mouth, I could feel the man bending over me, I could
feel his hot breath on my forehead, and a few seconds later I heard
Henning come out of his room upstairs and switch on the light on the
top landing. "If he comes downstairs," the voice whispered close to
my ear, "I shoot."
"'Then it was,' Mr. Stonebridge went on to say, 'that I shouted up to
Henning that I had only tripped over a rug, and that I was quite all
right. I don't think I ever looked death so very near in the face
before. The next moment I heard Henning switch off the light
upstairs and go back to his room. After that I remember nothing
more. I only have a vague recollection of a sudden terrible pain in
my head; everything else is a blank until I found myself in bed, and
with vague stirrings of memory bringing a return of that same
appalling headache.'
"The great point about Mr. Stonebridge's evidence was that he was
utterly unable to identify his assailant. He was not even sure
whether he had been attacked by two men or one, since he had been
blindfolded at the outset, and all that he heard was a husky voice
that spoke in a whisper. He was ready to admit that he might have
left the safe unlocked when he went to answer the front-door bell,
and he certainly had the papers relating to Mr. Shap's case on his
desk as he had been going through them earlier in the evening. Those
papers, therefore, had undoubtedly been burned in the grate, and it
was obvious that the theft and destruction of those papers was the
motive of the assault.
"After that we went from excitement to excitement. We did not get it
all the same day, of course; Allan Carysfort appeared, as far as I
can remember, three or four times before the local magistrates; in
between times he was out on bail, this having been fixed at £1,000 in
two recognisances £500 each, with an additional £500 on his own. It
seems that when he was arrested he had made a statement, to which he
had since unreservedly subscribed. He said that he had arrived in
London from Southampton on Monday the twenty-sixth, and after seeing
to some business in town, he took the eight-ten P.M. train on the
twenty-eighth to Tytherton, where he arrived at nine-fifty, having
dined on board. His father met him at the station with the car, but
it was such a beautiful moon-lit night Sir David and himself decided
that they would walk to the Grange and then sent the car home with a
message to Lady Carysfort that they would be home at about eleven
o'clock.
"Carysfort had been asked whether it was not strange that after being
absent from home for so long, he should have elected to put off
seeing his mother till a much later hour.
"'Not at all,' he replied. 'My father wished to put me _au fait_ of
certain family matters before I actually saw Lady Carysfort. These
matters,' he added emphatically in reply to questions put to him by
the magistrate, 'had nothing whatever to do with financial business,
least of all were they in any relation to Mr. Shap and his affairs.
Sir David and I,' he went on calmly, 'walked about for a while, and
then Sir David remembered that he wished to see a friend at the
County Club. He went in there, but I preferred to take another turn
out of doors, as I had not had a taste of English country air for
nearly two years.'
"Asked how long he had walked about Tytherton waiting for Sir David,
Carysfort thought about half an hour, and when questioned as to the
direction he had taken, he said he really couldn't remember.
"The police of course had adduced certain witnesses whose testimony
would justify the course they had taken in arresting a gentleman in
the position of Mr. Allan Carysfort. There was, first of all, Felix
Shap himself and his friend Julian Lloyd. They deposed that at about
half-past ten, or perhaps a little earlier, they were on their way to
see Mr. Stonebridge, as the latter had expressed a wish to see them
both and have another quiet talk over a cigar and a glass of wine;
Shap and Lloyd had been to the P.P.P. cinema in High Street, and they
left just before the end to go to Mr. Stonebridge's house. They were
within fifty yards of it when they saw a man turn out of the nearest
side street and go up to Mr. Stonebridge's house. The man went
through the garden gate and up to the front door. Shap and Lloyd saw
him in the act of ringing the bell. It was then somewhere between
ten-thirty and ten-forty-five. Mr. Stonebridge was so very much in
the habit of seeing friends, and even those clients with whom he was
intimate, late in the evenings, that Mr. Shap and Mr. Lloyd didn't
think anything of the incident; but, at the same time, they made up
their minds to postpone their own visit to Mr. Stonebridge until they
could be quite sure of seeing him alone. So they turned then and
there, and went straight back to the Black Swan where they lodged.
"I may add that with commendable reserve both these witnesses refused
to identify Allan Carysfort with Mr. Stonebridge's visitor on that
memorable Wednesday evening. The man they saw had an overcoat and
wore a Glengarry cap. More they could not say, as they had not seen
his face clearly.
"On the other hand the hall-porter at the County Club, another
witness for the Treasury, had no cause for such reserve. He said
that on the evening of February twenty-eighth, Sir David Carysfort
came to the Club a little before half-past ten. Mr. Allan was with
him then, but he didn't come in. The hall-porter heard him say to
Sir David: 'Very well, then! I'll pick you up here in about half an
hour!' And Sir David rejoined: 'Yes; don't be late!' Mr. Allan did
return to the Club at about eleven o'clock and the two gentlemen then
went off together. The hall-porter remembered the incident on that
date quite distinctly, because he recollected being much surprised at
seeing Mr. Allan Carysfort, who he thought was still abroad.
"After that there was another remand, Allan Carysfort's solicitor
having asked and obtained an adjournment for a week. But by this
time, as you may imagine, not only the county, but London Society too
were absolutely horror-struck. To think that a man in the position
of the Carysforts should have stooped to such an act, not only of
violence, but of improbity, was indeed staggering. Nor did public
opinion swerve from this attitude one hair's breadth, even though at
the next hearing all the proofs which the police had adduced against
the accused were absolutely confuted.
"Fortunately for Carysfort, his solicitors had been successful in
finding two witnesses, Miriam Page and Arthur Ormeley, who had seen
Mr. Allan Carysfort, whom they knew by sight, strolling by the river
at a quarter to eleven. They--like the hall-porter of the County
Club--remembered the circumstance very clearly, because they did not
know that Mr. Allan was home from abroad, and were astonished to see
him there.
"The point of the evidence of these witnesses was that the river
where they had seen Allan Carysfort strolling at a quarter to eleven
is at the diametrically opposite end of the town to that where lies
the Great West Road. Now the hall-porter had seen Allan Carysfort
outside the County Club at half-past ten and again at eleven. If
Carysfort was strolling by the river at a quarter to eleven, and
there was no reason to impugn the credibility of the witnesses, he
could not possibly have been the man whom Mr. Shap and Mr. Lloyd saw
ringing the bell of Mr. Stonebridge's house at about that same hour.
"Allan Carysfort was discharged by the magistrates, as you know.
There was no definite proof against him. But public opinion is ever
an uncertain quantity, and it is still dead against the Carysforts.
In the public mind two facts have remained indelibly fixed: firstly,
that the Carysforts had everything to gain by the destruction of
Felix Shap's papers and, secondly, that there was nobody else who
could possibly have benefited by it.
"Since then also Mr. Stonebridge has made a declaration that nothing
was stolen out of his safe and pocketbook except the papers and
letters belonging to Felix Shap. So what would you? Although Allan
Carysfort was discharged by the magistrates, really because there was
no tangible evidence against him, he did not leave the court without
a stain on his character. The stain was there, and there it is to
this day. It will take the Carysforts years to live the scandal
down; though some friends have remained loyal, there are always the
enemies, the envious, the uncharitable, and they insist that the two
witnesses--the only two, mind you, whose evidence did clear Allan
Carysfort of suspicion--had been bought and should not be believed,
while others simply declare that Sir David and his son employed some
ruffian to do the dirty work for them."
He gave a dry cackle, and contemplated me through his huge
horn-rimmed spectacles.
"And you are of that opinion, too, I imagine," he said.
"Well, it seems the only likely explanation," I replied guardedly.
"Surely you don't suppose," he retorted, "that a business man like
David Carysfort would place himself so entirely in the hands of a
ruffian that he would for ever after be the victim of blackmail!
Why, it would have been cheaper to buy off Felix Shap!"
"But," I rejoined, "I don't see who else had any interest in doing
away with those documents."
"I'll tell you," he rejoined dryly. "Felix Shap himself."
"What _do_ you mean?" I queried, with as much lofty scorn as I could
command.
"I mean," he replied, "that all Felix Shap's documents were
forgeries."
"Forgeries?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, spurious! False affidavits! Forgeries, the lot of 'em. My
belief is that Stonebridge began to suspect this himself, and I think
he has had a narrow escape of being murdered outright by those two
rascals. As it is, they have destroyed every proof of their
villainy, and old Stonebridge, I imagine, is content to let things
remain as they are rather than admit publicly that he was completely
taken in by two very plausible rogues."
"But," I urged, "what about the handwriting expert?"
The funny creature laughed aloud.
"Yes!" he said, "what about the expert? If there had been two they
would have disagreed. And mind you at a distance of twelve years a
signature would be difficult of absolute identification. Every one's
handwriting undergoes certain modifications in the course of years.
Experts," he reiterated. "Bah!"
"But," I went on, impatiently, "I don't see the object of the whole
scheme."
"The object was blackmail," the whimsical creature retorted, "and it
has succeeded admirably. Already we read that Messrs. Shap and Lloyd
are staying at expensive hotels in London, that they have granted
interviews to pressmen and written articles for half-penny
newspapers. We shall hear of them as cinema stars presently. They
have had the most gorgeous, the most paying publicity, and presently
Sir David Carysfort will have had enough of them and will put a few
more hundreds in their pockets just to be rid of them. That was the
object of the whole scheme, my dear young lady! And see how well it
was carried out.
"Of course the fuddle-headed Dutchman never thought of it. I imagine
that the whole scheme originated in the fertile brain of Mr. Julian
Lloyd. And it was thoroughly well thought out from the manufacture
of the documents and letters down to the assault on the silly old
country attorney. And, mind you, the rascals originally went to a
silly country attorney; they would have been afraid to go to a London
lawyer, lest he be too sharp for them.
"The only mistake they made were the letters purported to be written
to Berta Shap by the husband who is supposed to have disappeared, and
the copy of Berta's marriage certificate. It is those letters that
gave me the clue to the whole thing; old Stonebridge was too dull to
have seen through those letters. If they were genuine why should
Felix Shap have brought them over to England? They had nothing
whatever to do with any contract about the Shap Fuelettes. If they
were genuine, how could he guess that he would have to disprove a
story of a secret marriage and of young Alfred being the son of Sir
Alfred Carysfort? By wanting to prove too much, he, to my mind, gave
himself away, and one can but marvel that neither lawyers nor police
saw through the roguery.
"Of course the moment one understands that one set of papers was
spurious, it is easily concluded that all the others were forgeries.
And the late Sir Alfred Carysfort, anxious only to obliterate every
vestige of that early marriage of his, unwittingly played into the
hands of those two scoundrels by destroying all the correspondence
that he had ever had with Shap.
"Think it all over, you will see that I am right. Look at this
paragraph again in the _Evening Post_, does it not bear out what I
say?"
The paragraph in the evening paper to which the Old Man in the Corner
was pointing read as follows:
"Among the passengers on the Dutch liner _Stadt Rotterdam_ is Mr.
Felix Shap, the hero of a recent celebrated case. He is returning to
Batavia, having, through a misadventure which has remained an
impenetrable mystery to this day, been deprived of all the proofs
that would have established his claim to a substantial share of the
profits in the Shap Fuelettes Company. Fortunately Mr. Shap had
enlisted so many sympathies in England that his friends had no
difficulty in collecting a considerable sum of money which was
presented to him on his departure in the form of a purse and as a
compensation for the ill-luck which has attended him since he set
foot in this country. Mr. Shap will now be able to take abroad with
him the assurance that British public opinion is always on the side
of the victims of an adverse and unmerited fate."
"Yes!" the funny creature concluded with a cackle, "until the victims
are found out to be rogues. Mr. Felix Shap and his friend, Mr.
Julian Lloyd, will be found out some day."
The next moment he had gone with that rapidity which was so
characteristic of him, and I might have thought that he was just a
spook who had come to visit me whilst I dozed over my cup of tea,
only that on the table by the side of an empty glass was a piece of
string adorned with a series of complicated knots.
VIII
THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT
§1
"Did you ever make up your mind about that Brudenell Court affair?"
the Old Man in the Corner said to me that day.
"No," I replied. "As far as I am concerned the death of Colonel
Forburg has remained a complete mystery."
"You don't think," he insisted, "that Morley Thrall was guilty?"
"Well," I said, "I don't know what to think."
"Then don't do it," he rejoined, with a chuckle, "if you don't know
what to think, then it's best not to think at all. At any rate wait
until I have told you exactly what did happen--not as it was reported
in the newspapers, but in the sequence in which the various incidents
occurred.
"On Christmas Eve, last year, while the family were at dinner, there
was a sudden commotion and cries of 'Stop, thief!' issuing from the
back premises of Brudenell Court, the country seat of a certain
Colonel Forburg. The butler ran in excitedly to say that Julia
Mason, one of the maids, was drawing down the blinds in one of the
first-floor rooms, when she saw a man fiddling with the shutters of
the French window in the smoking-room downstairs. She at once gave
the alarm, whereupon the man bolted across the garden in the
direction of the five-acre field. The Colonel and his stepson, as
well as two male guests who were dining with them, immediately jumped
up and hurried out to help in the chase. It was a very dark night,
people were running to and fro, and for a few moments there was a
great deal of noise and confusion, through which two pistol-shots in
close succession were distinctly heard.
"The ladies--amongst whom was Miss Monica Glenluce, the Colonel's
stepdaughter--had remained in the dining-room, and the dinner was
kept waiting, pending the return of the gentlemen. They straggled in
one by one, all except the Colonel. The ladies eagerly asked for
news; the gentlemen could not say much--the night was very dark and
they had just waited about outside until some of the indoor men who
had given chase came back with the news that the thief had been
caught.
"This news was confirmed by young Glenluce, Miss Monica's brother,
who was the last to return. He had actually witnessed the capture.
The thief had bolted straight across the five-acre meadow, but
doubled back before he reached the stables, turned sharply to the
right through the kitchen garden, and then jumped over the boundary
wall of the grounds into the lane beyond, where he fell straight into
the arms of the local constable who happened to be passing by.